CDA (A New Mission)

The Center for Digital Art is currently modifying it’s mission to focus on the creation and exhibition of motionpaintings as well as the promotion of small intense hands-on workshops during the summer months in Michel’s studio in West Brattleboro, Vermont. As such, it’s purpose is to create a framework for the making of digital artwork that can be done individually or collectively both online and/or in small collaborative groups among people meeting on CDA’s grounds in Brattleboro, Vermont. Please visit this page often to get more updates and details or contact mjmoyse@gmail.com if interested in the upcoming summer workshops 2023.

The Vimeo below – a gallery simulation of three artworks – is an introduction to my own artwork which I call ‘motionpaintings’ – i.e. art rooted in traditional painting practices yet one that incorporates various software and hardware developments in computer technology.   I believe this is a ‘contemporary palette’ that offers unique aesthetic opportunities only possible through the integration of duration and sense.  For more examples of my motionpaintings, please click on my website michelmoyse.com or go to my Vimeo site (google Michel Moyse on Vimeo).

That a work of art occupies multiple spaces is of course not new, and history abounds with examples:  The Medieval diptych and triptych; Egyptian hieroglyphs; and more recently, Cubism, to name just a few.  But that the process itself becomes objectified and codified into new modes of artistic expression is, I think, a recent development.  The causes for this can be traced at least partially to our perception of reality enhanced through a variety of sensory manipulations – television, radio, video, computer, etc. This obviously creates an environment which is multi-layered; an environment which redefines in fundamental ways what we mean by ‘reality’ and which – and this is the important point – consequently calls for a reinterpretation of what is specifically relevant to us and therefore worthy of exploration and expression. This forcibly entails concomitant shifts in modes of perception – that is to say, in consciousness.  And that this coincides with the dissolution of the (largely Western) Cartesian dichotomy of object/subject – of conscious and subconscious; of self and other – need not surprise us.  Boundaries are in constant flux; reinterpreted and redefined; both on the personal level as well as the sociopolitical level.  Process takes precedence over product; form over content.  What this points to is, in fact, a new understanding of artistic expression.  The two concepts of ‘integrity’ and ‘unity’, for example, so critical in defining art of the past – in defining a spatially and temporally homogeneous sensibility (balance, harmony, etc.) – are now modified to include disparate and random sensibilities; to include, for example, the ‘incongruous’ as well as the ‘congruous’, the ‘disharmonious’ as well as the ‘harmonious’, the ‘irrelevant’ as well as the ‘relevant’, the ‘incoherent’ as well as the ‘coherent’.  And this, I believe, is the specific purview of the ‘contemporary’ artist.

For a very personal look at what art means to me, please click on Five Essays on Art & Painting.